Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

Hey. Sorry I've been scarce. Mostly been hanging out elsewhere. I think getting booted from Twitter kinda made me realize that Masto's not an ideal medium for me either, so I guess I'm taking a bit of a break?

Been under a lot of stress. The Cat Situation next door is still ongoing. There's construction, and signs that the (largely non-English-speaking, which really complicates things) family doing the work is also moving in?

Really, we are in better shape than we were when Artie started her Attic Adventures in April. If they do lock the path to the attic on us and she still gets up there, we have at least three possible means of entry, plus the likely success of an "¡Hola! Nuestros gatos están en su ático! ¿Podemos entrar y rescatarlas, por favor?"

But I'm still freaked to the point of low-grade agoraphobia when I'm not here to watch the house and getting jumpy every time I hear ANY bump from outside. My mental health is not great right now.

It didn't help that we spotted Shemp stuck in a DIFFERENT place the other day, a neighbor's storage locker. We're 99% he's fine, the neighbor assured us the cats have a hole they can get in and out of and she hears them in there all the time. But I still haven't seen Shemp since then and some part of me is still DETERMINED he somehow managed to perish from being locked in a cool, cozy garage for maybe two hours.

Because I'm going fucking crazy with worry and stress down here. And hurricane season is coming.

SIlly stoned thought from last night:

You know how they say film genres have a life cycle? And they go through "primitive," "classic," "revisionist," and "parodic" phases?

I was thinking about what would happen f the remake trend itself went into its final throes and we started getting WEIRD remakes of things...

Like, years ago I was matching Evil Dead 2 with a dear friend and we started joking around about doing a remake where all the SFX gore -- literally meat scraps and red Karo syrup per Raimi-- was replaced with breakfast foods. It's the exact same film, but when someone gets splatted, out comes orange juice, scrambled eggs, æbleskivers, sausage links...

Or a remake of Tarantino's Deathproof. But the villain(s) chase innocent women around in their tricked out polka-dot 1920s clown car with a goofy air horn and 50 of their friends crammed into the back dressed in harlequin makeup.

Title: "Foolproof."

I can not begin to express how grateful I am to have an anxiety journal these days. It does miracles.

I just dumped all my current concerns into it -- Mom being by herself here in Ohio, my busted (but not that badly it looks like) ankle, Shemp's been AWOL for a couple days again, Roe v Wade about to go down.

And I can't speak for anyone else but it really really works for me. These things will still worry me, but I don't have to RUMINATE about them. I don't have to feel like if I don't juggle them in my head constantly, I'll let something slip.

And I've kinda tricked my brain into feeling I've done something about them. "What are you complaining about? They're on THE LIST now. That's standard procedure. Everything is going according to plan."

And maybe some or all of these things will still turn to ruin. Sooner or later one of them has to. But now, after nearly five years of keeping this journal, I have a mountain of evidence that, nah, odds are good it's fine. The TRUE disasters have come a lot less often than I worried, and all of them have just kinda... sunk into the waves of time.

I'm not good but I'm OK and having a *strategy* for being OK in this day and age is important and fuck. Again, can't guarantee it'll work for you, but I recommend it very highly.

my third parting shot so far:

"It turns out that the difference between the Empress* of Mars and the Empress of Mars is a big enough stick. Humans are so fuckin' predictable."

And rrreal quick, an addendum now that I'm out of Ranty Tiger Mode and a little more reflective:

I'm NOT condemning anyone for saying they personally are too tired and hurt to fight back right now. The last few years have been Big History punching us in the face repeatedly and even after be braced for it for 30 years even I'm still shocked how fast and brutal it's been.

It is OKAY if you can't, and it's OK if you're scared. I'm sure as fuck not going to stop loving you, especially when you're an innocent victim in all this who never ASKED to have to be brave on top of everything else.

I'm talking the Left At Large here. I wanna fight. We're gonna need a lot of people to help. We're not gonna need EVERYBODY to fight all the time. We *can* take turns. :)

I am just dropping a little bombast in the hopes some tiny bit of my own hope -- and fury -- is contagious. If we ALL cave, yeah, your fear becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So I HAVE to speak out about it.

But I'm not mad you're scared. I'm mad those motherfuckers scared you and I am about ready to pick up The Imperial[1] Beatin' Stick and go chase them down. And I'm just sayin' "right here, right now, who the fuck's with me."

I love you, and I think one particular you who's been hurtin' knows who "you" is. You stay home and rest where it's safe. Aunt Kitty got your back.

OK, she got your back in a largely rhetorical way. She hasn't QUITE figured out yet how to administer this beating that her tigery heart sings out for. And her idea of "fight" will probably mostly involve a lot of time in the Imperial Archives lookin' at how our ancestors ate evil humans in the past. 😼​ I'm really more of a strategist than a warrior.

But you fetch me a neck and I know where the fangs go.

[1] yeah fuck you solar concilience i am the ACTUAL FUCKING QUEEN OF MARS AND WOE BETIDE ANYONE WHO OBSTRUCTS ME

(also pretend i delivered a big rant using terran evolution and the incredibly ability of life to speciate and adapt to hostile environs as a metaphor for what we're about to go through, and that it was really really clever and you were all v impressed)

(if the tardigrades and the Inuit can live in the shit they live in so can we and we are how many times more adaptable than these sheltered ignorant mentally calcified religious fucks?)

Well. This aged poorly.

Outie for real now. Sorry if I did any psychic damage, but... yeah, there are gonna be a lot of mindworm experiments in the next couple years. Brace yourselves for the telepathic feedback.

We got a PLAN up here on Mars. 😼​

What it really boils down to is that I GENUINELY, sincerely don't get what is supposedly so special about the right-wing that we are not capable of wielding the exact same power -- even if our alleged leaders are far too blinkered and ossified to do it themselves.

The main difference I see is that they have embraced the old "frog in a butter churn" metaphor and DON'T EVER LET REALITY STOP THEM. They don't give up. "They Have God On Their Side." They sit wherever they like and act like they belong there, whereas leftists... pussyfoot and I'm getting tired of it and all the conflict-aversion.

We could have that power. You just have to pick it up and use it. Dammit.

Walking away from Masto for a while. Hoping to let this stew until at least the weekend. I really did not intend to open a can of mindworms, let alone get any of them on any of my friends who are having a rough time.

But I'm begging you. Look at those mindworms and ask "What would Academician Prokhor Zakharov* Do?"

Get to work weaponizing those little fuckers, because lord knows Miriam won't have the FAINTEST clue how to even deal with them, let alone make friends with them herself. Gosh, communing with alien telepaths would be a SIN.

(I mean, you can ask him. He'd canonically be 28 right now. 🤯​)

Nicer addendum to that last post:

Remember, our communities thrived for CENTURIES under oppression. "We all get tossed into camps or worse" is ONE of many possible outcomes, and... I mean... it's not even where all right-wing authoritarian societies end up. Most just... are content to quietly suck and make life difficult for good people -- and EXTREMELY difficult or untenable for a segment of them -- for a few decades.

I would put my money on this being, like, "Duterte bad" or "Marcos bad" or "Franco bad," not -- I'll come out and say it -- "Hitler bad" or "Amin bad."

And I say that with all sympathy because I have spent my whole life fixating on worst-case scenarios and it's a natural and often sensible human habit.

But yeah. This all has scary resemblances to Berlin '32 and THE RESULTANT FEARS ARE VALID AS SHIT. We should be on the strongest guard against this. We need to get ready NOW to push back. But I don't think doom is inevitable -- and I have course notes from my Russia and Germany classes to back me up so don't even fuck with the history tiger.

I think things will get worse for us. The momentum of the Trump cult and its willingness to demonize us is terrifying. Don't get me wrong, this is a high alert we're at.

But we can do this. And what we really, really, REALLY NO I AM SO FUCKING SERIOUS HERE is start mining our history for the survival tricks of our forebears. There is a HUGE amount of trickery and cultural agility in our past, that would El-ahrairah Himself blush.

Don't give up until you've at LEAST done your own deep dive into it and seen just how well other people have persisted through unimaginable hardship and persecution.

And then add to that the fact that the Internet is our native ground. We have no excuse not to be taking advantage of that in much the same way the Viet Cong -- and the Trung Sisters before them -- took advantage of the Indochinese jungle.

The right rose to power on a raft of bullshit. Jim Watkins leveraged real power just by talking shit on 4chan. We walk away from that power on a regular basis. And I DEMAND at this point to know why.

i love you even when i gotta roar at you and i leave you with this

i know eyes glaze over at Other People's Music but please please please listen and read the lyrics, this is my most important political song by far

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru5zYr8aB0k

http://www.koly.com/stereolab/song.php?id=148

also, call a republican senator and unload on them. summon up your meanest most sarcastic self. mock their intellect cruelly. i swear if there is a single ounce of psycho jungle cat in you soul it will make you feel better

🐯​✊​❤️​

and if anyone wants to attempt a rebuttal without taking my literary advice first that's fine but i absolutely guarantee you that all you're gonna get is that mona lisa smile tigers get when they are about to lick their forepaw and leave the room while a small creature is trying to convince them there is somehow inconceivably a threat bigger than them outside

you have no fucking clue what kind of mayhem i am willing to unleash on the world and i am fucking telling you THEY should be scared of US and they're fucking morons if they're not but we KNEW THAT, its ugly and scary and horrifying but you know that what else it absolutely is NOT is sustainable because entropy and reality have a way of kicking the shit out of ideological card-houses like these

i can express my feelings about the left today in a single image capture from a very famous tv show but it wouldn't make any of you any happier nor enhance my ability to keep my circle of friends from bailing on me in these trying times

so i'm just gonna remind people i lived in the shadow of constant doomsaying for over a decade (even if it was very sweet friendly beautiful intelligent self-sacrificing funny doom with a very nice butt and it got much less doomy over the years ♥️​♠️​♥️​♠️​) and i'm just not buyin' any of it, because HERE I STILL AM

and if we're fucked i'm not only gonna make the most of it, well motherfuckers, i have been thinking about death EVERY FUCKING DAY OF MY LIFE SINCE THE DAY I LOST MY FATHER AT AGE 11 and it's just lost its ability to scare me

i am almost looking forward to the opportunity to go explode in a blaze of glory yet strongly suspect that i will not be provided with the chance

and if you really want the knock-down drag-out historical argument over this, we can do it that someday, but ffs not right now -- maybe when i get home -- but you really really ain't gonna like what i have to say

this ain't a subtweet -- i think once you're addressing more than 30 people at once, it no longer fits that definition

i just ain't convinced this is an unwinnable hand UNLESS WE FOLD OUT OF SELF-REINFORCING FEAR and i am skeptical as fuck about the cultural complexes and collective leftist... issues... leading people to think it is

don't make this into a self-fulfilling prophecy, that's the meanest thing i have to say, because i have fucking WATCHED friend after friend after friend curl up so fucking tight into their shells waiting for blows that never came... except that the blow came in the from of the damage done by HIDING INSTEAD OF ACTING and i am frustrated to the point of tears trying to figure out how to coax some of you out

if you're mad at me now, i ask you, plea for you to do me one big favor first -- reread at least the first two Wrinkle In Time books before you come at me

do you think meg and calvin were not scared absolutely shitless of It? thank got the ms. interrogatives (you know, the witch ladies) were there to calm them the fuck down, and once i am over my frustrating that is exactly the role i guess i'm gonna have to play

can you seriously look me in the eyes and tell me these fucking soulless idiots we're up against will have the FAINTEST ABILITY to learn how to kythe or tesser? pick up a goddamn spiritual weapon and use it

hooray hooray
the first of may
outdoor fucking
starts today

Welp. End of an era. All accounts suspended from Twitter. I went down telling a confessed admirer of HItler to go fuck himself for posting pedo blood-libel accusations against transwomen.

Zebratron2069 is gone, too, the porn account. It looks like it hasn't affected Peg's accounts, not sure how they work this exactly.

I filled out the "appeal your suspension" form. It may have been the most obscene thing I have ever written.

Good riddance.

So yeah. I'm okay. Mom's okayish. Memorial service is coming up soonish, plans start today.

If you were thinking of doing something unkind to yourself today, don't do it-- as a favor to me. Life is really short and we* all deserve joy.

* OFFER DOES NOT APPLY TO CERTAIN INDIVIDUALS, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO JEFF BEZOS, MARK ZUCKERBERG, ELON MUSK, D***** T****, AND RICHARD SPENCER.

I've mentioned it elsewhere so I suspect most of you know, but I feel like I should announce it here, too.

My stepdad died today.

He was a really good guy. I am so grateful for everything he did for me and my mom. I will miss him horribly and I will not be particularly sane until I' reassured that my mom will be OK in the short, medium, and long run.

That's all I really have to say. Please don't reply. I'm full up on social niceties and wouldn't even know how to process them right now, though I really appreciate the ones I've gotten, and I don't have the mental energy to respond.